"USDA has invested less than one percent of its budget into tree-based practices. Yet that small investment allows us to help create private goods and public services that reap great rewards, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions and more resilient agricultural lands," Vilsack said. "However, much work remains to promote and sustain agroforestry practices, which have great potential to promote economic growth and job creation in rural communities."

Agroforestry is a management approach that intentionally combines agriculture and forestry to create more sustainable land-use systems. Over the last five years, USDA has assisted landowners financially and with technical guidance to establish roughly 336,000 acres of windbreaks, riparian forest buffers and alley cropping; about 2,000 acres of silvopasture; and about 500 acres of forest farming. Those acres represent less than 1 percent of the potentially suitable land for applying those practices, suggesting there is an opportunity to significantly expand the application of agroforestry in the United States.

With the release of this report on agroforestry, USDA wants to start a national conversation about agroforestry with producers, landowners, communities and young people - America's future farmers.

"Our goal is and always has been to help landowners understand that trees - and other permanent vegetation - planted in the right place for the right reason, will add value to their lands," said Wayne Honeycutt, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Deputy Chief for Science and Technology, who chairs USDA's Agroforestry Executive Steering Committee. "Through the report, we are able to show landowner successes. In some cases, family farms have been saved and woodlands spared from development. We hope by showing these stories, more landowners will see the potential for their operations."